Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Disputes, Clones, Audio
Needed: One referee. Quixotic1 writes "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.
Store in the ammunition box. leonbrooks writes "Recently, images from a presentation by Microsoft Belgium were published on the web. The presentation made some startling (for Microsoft) concessions to Open Source, then set about FUDding the GPL into the ground. I whacked together a point-by-point answer to the anti-GPL FUD. Happy linking ..."
Tithe 10 percent. Luke Francl writes "Inspired by Lawrence Lessig's OSCON remarks, Lessig's Challenge is a way for people concerned by the attempts by the entertainment industry to close off the net to fight back. The challenge is to spend more on those who fight for the open network than you do on its enemies. Since it appeared on Slashdot last month, 10 people have joined me and we've raised over $2300 for good causes (organizations like the EFF, the ACLU, the FSF, along with free software/open source programmers and online artists). And that's just the ones I know about! Cory Doctorow wrote to tell me that many people were inspired by the challenge to join the EFF. ... Check out the list of suggested recipients."
Like obsidian, and coal, and dirt ... salimfadhley writes "Today BBC Radio 4 began serialising Phillip Pullman's popular "Dark Materials" trilogy. The beeb will be broadcasting one episode per week, with a RA stream of the latest episode that can be found on the promotional site. You can find "The Golden Compass" (called "Northern Lights" in Europe) on the website now. This stream will be replaced with episode 2 next Saturday.
The Dark Materials series was originally intended as children's fiction, however owing to excellent storytelling and a significantly darker theme than Harry Potter, has done rather well in U.S. and UK adult market.
The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence. Unsurprisingly this theme has upset fundamentalist Christians."
Unfamiliar? Read the Slashdot review of the trilogy.
The clones I meet are mostly in pairs. PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports that the Raelian clone claim echoes a hoax of 25 years ago. And while we have better technology now for testing the claim quickly, there is still room for deception, and some people don't trust the science (and pseudoscience) reporter the Raelians appointed to test their claim."
The domain name is not a trademark registry. You have no moral claim to the domain name. Your only hope is throwing $1000 at ICANN, who will happily rule in your favor.
> "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
Here's a cheap, effective solution: deal with it. The current owner has as much right to it as you do (or more, since ownership is 9/10 of the law).
Try
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
[from the link:] > Known in the OSS community as a "viral" licence.
As the author points out, and as others of us have stated repeatedly: the GPL isn't viral, it's recursive. I've got lots of non-GPL software on my home system, and none of it has ever "caught" the GPL.
The simple rule is: if A is GPL'd and B is derived from A, then B is GPL'd. The rule is "recursive" or "transitive", but not "viral". The OSS community would do itself a favor to quit calling it "viral". (Though in fact the term seems to be more common among complainers than among GPLers, despite what the quoted MS document says.)
Hint to Microsoft: if you don't want to GPL your software, don't derive it from GPL'd software. It's as simple as that -- at least for people who aren't being obtuse willfully.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.
How damnably ironic can Timothy be (without trying to be)? The whole point of the $1000 fee is that there's money to be made. You know how much money? Right about $1000, minus expenses. *sigh*
The reality is, the $1000 fee goes towards two main purposes, neither of which is profit. The first is to cover a relatively expensive process (yes, flame on, I know that you would arbitrate and manage claims for free). The second reason is to provide a barrier to entry. "Barrier to entry" sounds evil to most knee-jerk thinkers, but this one is a good barrier. Trust me, I would file claims against every company I didn't like in the world if the fee was only $1. I would have fun with the system. So would everyone else. The $1000 price tag makes me think a bit more before I challenge for a domain name that is "rightfully" mine.
When will people learn that the mainstream media is not interested at all in the truth value of news? They are solely focused on one thing and one thing only: entertainment value... which leads to more viewers, which leads to more advertising dollars, which leads to more profit.
If you want truth, facts and knowledge, you go to non-profit organizations, public broadcasting and "alternative" media. Don't watch Crossfire. Don't watch Connie Chung. Don't watch NBC, CBS or ABC. And for God's sake, don't even think about watching Fox News. Those are entertainment news programs.
I will say one thing, though. Print media still does a good job in my opinion, because they actually spend time researching their stories. Sitting down and reading through a whole newspaper, whether it's the New York Times, USA Today or the Wall Street Journal, can be a pretty good experience.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
All you have to do is: don't be hung up on your domain name being identical to your trademark name. Almost nobody's is.
If your trademark is non-descriptive (e.g. nothing about the name "Levi" indicates they sell jeans) then it might really collide with someone else somewhere else in this big world. At best, it might be ambiguous and vague. Maybe combine your trademark with something descriptive, and you could even end up with a better domain name than your vague trademark. (e.g. Which is a better domain name: levi.com or levijeans.com?)
Or if it absolutely must be the same, then use a different TLD. You probably don't have a TLD in your 20-year-old trademark (e.g. that company in Redmond is not named "Microsoft Dot Com") so you had little hope of getting an exact match on the whole string anyway. The original purposes for many of the TLDs are long forgotten and unenforced, so just pick any of 'em, whatever looks pretty. Whatever. You might be surprised at how many websites are not actually hosted in Tuvala.
If there's no dispute, then there's no expense. You can't get more inexpensive than that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.